Kibosh Cloud customers should not be paying for local antivirus of any kind. In the past we’ve recommended Microsoft’s Security Essentials, but they’ve since stopped supporting that in favor of Windows Defender which only works on Windows 8 & 10.

So for those of us still using Windows XP , Vista or 7 we’ll need to find another local antivirus. When searching for an Antivirus solution please keep the following points in mind:

  1. Kibosh Cloud provides an excellent layer of malware, and phishing website protection. It blocks the site before you get to it, so it will block phishing email links, thus preventing the downloading / installation of malware.
  2. You only need local antivirus. You do not need any other feature all Antivirus companies try to upsell you. Let’s use the popular Avast as an example. It’s free to download and use, but be prepaired for the hard sell of ‘Internet Security’, ‘Email Protection’, and ‘Pro Antivirus’. You need none of these addional features, just use the ‘Free Antivirus’.
    1. What is ‘Internet Security’? It means they are sending your data through their servers and it’s being logged. Email security? Same thing, they are scanning all of your emails to give you protection. If you have a private domain with your own email address (i.e., non gmail, yahoo, live, etc) then maybe Email Security would be something to consider, but for the vast majority of us who use one of the popular, free email services like gmail – they already scan your email and block the bad stuff.
  3. Antivirus, once installed, has intimate access to your operating system. It must to provide the protection you need. Thus Antivirus is a highly desireable target for the ‘bad guys’.
    1. Is your Antivirus Software Vulnerable to Attack?
    2. Antivirus is dead: Long live Antivirus!
  4. The biggest points of threat on your Windows devices is in fact the third party apps like Java, Flash, Adobe, etc. All these apps are regularly asking you to install updates to block new, known, attacks. Keep them updated.

In summary, with Kibosh Cloud protecting your devices you only need a simple, free local antivrus for that added layer of security, but there are trade offs. Personally we still use Security Essentials + WinPatrol (the free version) + Kibosh Cloud.